


Secret Weapon

by vinegardog



Category: Farscape
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 21:54:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16437515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinegardog/pseuds/vinegardog
Summary: How an everyday object becomes a secret weapon





	Secret Weapon

Written for SC107 - The Games People Play hosted by A Damned Scientist

Setting: 25 cycles before S4 of the show

Spoilers: None

Word Count: about 1200

Rating: PG

Unbetaed because I had forgotten that I had written it!

Warning: It is what it is, because I just wanted to contribute something.

 

**Secret Weapon (PG)**

She had always been small: the smallest of her siblings, the smallest of her playmates in nursery school, the smallest of all the pupils at the boarding academy she attended for long cycles and the smallest of her colleagues later in life.

Her brothers refused to play games with her mainly because they didn’t want to get scalded by their mother if they hurt her by getting too physical. Her sisters refused to play games with her, mainly because they were envious of the way their mother fussed over here and her doll-like daintiness.

It didn’t matter that she told her brothers she was not afraid of getting hurt and it didn’t matter that she told her sisters that it was not her fault that their mother had a soft spot for her: they left her out of their adventures and play-making and pretended she didn’t exist. And it hurt her deeply.

She was similarly ostracized by her peers in nursery school and later by the students at the private boarding academy her parents sent her to as dictated by their social status.

The teachers there were afraid of her father, who could have got them fired, arrested or even executed if anything awful had befallen his little girl, which meant games, when she was involved, were always engineered to keep her safe and were centered around mental ability rather than physical prowess. She was always a winner at those. Her mind was sharp, trained to notice details and her innate and fierce competitiveness, warped and frustrated by being mollycoddled all her life when it came to physical challenges, came pouring out of her like molten lava when given the chance. Which, of course, never endeared her to any of her rivals, especially the male ones who particularly resented being humiliated by her sharp mind day after day and cycle after cycle.

When it came to how she was affected by it all - the being left alone in a corner while others ran around roughhousing and competing on the various fields of play and training - well it had made her profoundly bitter. Day by day, monen by monen, cycle by cycle her bitterness had built up into a towering inner rage, which she was careful never openly to display in a physical manner. It was there however, all the time, simmering behind her cold eyes and sharp mind, behind her growing ambition to become the best, to climb to the top of the social scale, the very top - no matter what it might take to achieve it. She would best all others to get there or she would die trying.

It was the last weeken of the last cycle of boarding school. Despite the fact that her father’s influence would have seen her graduate no matter what, she had however earned her place in the final cycle of the competitive training academy fair and square thanks to her superior mind. And absolutely nobody or nothing in the universe could have convinced her otherwise.

She had gone through long cycles of being sneered at, of being bullied by the large males and larger than her females who surrounded her daily, of being treated as a second class individual by them because of her size and because of their petty jealousy of her sharp mind and it was now time - before they left the academy and scattered throughout the empire back to where they came from - for her to take her revenge. It would be sweet, it would be implacable and it would be possible thanks to her powers of observation and the deep knowledge she possessed of her species’ anatomical traits.

Biology was not a subject that was even studied at the educational establishment she had attended. It was considered useless there, a subject better reserved for the more common schools where the less fortunate youth with much less bright futures ahead of them than hers and her ilk’s might attend with a view to becoming Diagnosans or nurses and ending up in service to the power echelons, such as the one to which she belonged. Her academy concentrated on producing future governors, high-ranked administrators, politicians and military leaders, so the only subjects taught there were strategy, economics, history, political sciences, law, public administration and others ones along those lines.

Biology however had always been a passion of hers, one that she had cultivated in secret since the time when, very young, she had realized that she would never grow to be as big and as tall as all the other members of her species. She had wanted to find a reason as to why she was so physically lacking, but alas, as hard as she had tried, she had never been able to find an explanation for it. The process of looking for one however had made her a true expert on every single aspect of the subject matter. And she had stored every little bit of that knowledge away for future use.

And now, well now, the time had finally come to apply that acquired knowledge and to act out her revenge.

She knew that her classmates were gathered in the indoor space of the main academy building reserved for their physical training. She stood at the entrance of it and looked at each of them in turn: they had just finished their last fighting class before graduation and they were laughing, joking, relieved to have completed their studies, eager to go off into the world and make a glorious future for themselves out there. They hadn’t even noticed her standing there and they didn’t notice her now approaching either: she had to clear her throat not once but twice for them to finally turn their heads towards her. Their faces, at her sight, displayed an array of emotions ranging from scorn to annoyance, to which she was used as it was the norm.

Scorn and annoyance turned however into amused smirks and open derision when they noticed that she had donned some sort of unusual headgear. An item which she had never worn before and which was not part of their academy uniform. They catcalled and made fun of her then, wanting to hurt her feelings. Which only caused her determination to strengthen.

“Do you like to play games, boys and girls?” She asked them acting unperturbed by their sneers. “I challenge you to a one-to-one game of endurance, a duel.”

“A duel? With you? Have you lost your tiny mind?” Kartak, the tallest of the males and the most proficient of fighters, asked her. “‘It’d be a waste of our time.”

“Well, if you don’t want it to be a waste of your time, how about we make it a game to the death, Kartak. You can go first and have the pleasure of killing me, if you like. What do you say?” She challenged him.

Kartak laughed out loud and was soon joined in his mirth by all the others present: “And pray tell us, what kind of weapon would we use for this game to the death of yours? You are pathetically inferior in every form of combat as the last few cycles have abundantly demonstrated” He said with spite.

She pretended to think on this. She fiddled with the hem of her tunic and then spread her hands wide, palms out: “How about we keep it simple? A heat probe duel, no weapons.”

Two arns later, she left the training room, tired but happy.

Eighteen bodies lay dead in it, scorched and contorted on the floor, slain by her hands and by her superior knowledge. The headgear had been her secret weapon. What those eighteen dullards had not known was that a simple cover on their heads would have protected them from death, because that was the weak spot of their species: the crown of their skulls. It was the most susceptible spot to intense heat on their entire bodies, but the fools had been unaware of it and she had taken full advantage of it.

She walked slowly back to her dormitory, reliving in her head the eighteen victories just achieved: what gave her most satisfaction was remembering the panicked look in her opponents’ eyes as they progressively weakened, wondering why their own probes were not having the desired effect on the little, arrogant runt who had dared challenge them.

Their hubris would not let them give up - she had counted on that - and they had paid the price of it with their lives.

And as far as her future was concerned, she was not in the least worried about being punished for her murderous deed: her father’s influence and power would protect her. Even better, if she played her cards right, she might even convince him to use her feat to propel her forward faster and higher through the Imperial ranks.

________

_25 cycles later_

As she sashayed out of the room on Katratzi, she heard the opinionated, distasteful Human mutter:

“Thanks. She scares the crap out of me.”

And then she heard his dull, sour-faced Sebacean mate reply: “It’s the hat.”

War Minister Ahkna’s lips curled up in a satisfied little smile.

The hat was and always had been her secret, infallible weapon.

 

The End


End file.
